The pace picks up sharply. Futurologists warn that over the next 10 years, humanity will have to go through as much change as it has experienced in a thousand past ones.
So what happens? What does this mean for us?
First. Progress was not at all an optimistic triumph of pure knowledge. But just a way to survive. A means of struggle, in particular, the struggle for markets, if we look at the economy.
Second. This requires the attention of any entrepreneur progress in business, in business has become so rapid that no one can dream of building a quiet, solid family business. Pass it on to your children, who will pass it on to their grandchildren. On the contrary, you have to be prepared for the fact that any business you start will not be durable. That in your life you will have to do many different things, master different professions or start different business projects, develop different products. Only change is permanent.
Third. Progress, the process of global self-organization is not only the birth of new structures, but also the disappearance, death of the old ones. Any structure of human society, be it an ethnic group, a state, a technological order or a separate company, has its own moment of birth. But the moment of death is the same. No system is permanent. Companies, businesses are exactly the systems in which we are honored to work, or even these are our projects that we ourselves have created and are developing. Why are they mortal? How are they dead? Can I, with my business, get out of this «wheel of samsara» an endless chain of deaths and births? (Spoiler you wont be able to get out, but you need to be able to transform, reinvent your affairs. Then rebirth will not be a mortal enemy, but your ally.)
Life cycle
The person lives. He is born, grows, grows old and dies. No one can escape the inexorable law of being. But thats not all sadness. A person lives in a society of other people, works in a team, coexists with the state, belongs to some ethnic group. So, each system (family, firm, country, etc.) like an individual is also born, develops, withers and dies. Not only is our own age of life a burden that we cant do anything about. Quite independently of our desire, we are born in a country with a thousand-year history, or vice versa, which appeared quite recently, we find ourselves in a company that, perhaps, is experiencing the age of youthful folly, or is an example of a wise old man. Although nothing can be done about it, it probably wont hurt anyone to understand life in general and social systems in particular.
Lets start from the description of ethnogenesis the theory of L. N. Gumilyov, which he created while in prison in Stalins Norillag.
Gumilev Lev Nikolaevich (1912 1992) the son of Nikolai Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova, poets of the «Silver Age», the author of the term «Silver Age of Russian Poetry», historian and geographer, author of the theory (more precisely, teaching) of ethnogenesis that is, the origin and development large supranational communities.
Reading Gumilev, the chaos of historical events appears as a clear picture of the complex, but natural interaction of emerging and disappearing systems. Before the genius of Gumilev, a picture of a pattern opened up, which he tried to explain. To do this, he had, for example, to introduce the concept of «passionarity» a sexually transmitted genetic trait that determines the active behavior of people, thanks to which large social systems are created and developed.
«Passionarity is a sign that arises as a result of a mutation (passionary impulse) and forms within a population a certain number of people with an increased craving for action. We will call such people passionaries.»
(L. N. Gumilev)
However, following this, we would have to admit that molecules with atoms in vortices of cyclones or in layers of boiling water should also be supplied with a similar genetic factor. When summarizing the theory under the global historical picture that opened up to him, L. N. Gumilev rearranged cause and effect. Quite the contrary: this social system objectively implements strict rules for selecting a certain behavior of individuals, its components at different stages, different, and not «innate» qualities of the elements determine the state of the system. The fact is that social systems are the same open dissipative structures as, for example, atmospheric anti- and simple cyclones, whirlwinds of boiling water in a kettle, or vibration modes of atoms inside a laser.
Let us state Gumilevs theory, shifting it to the modern synergetic representation, as we understand it:
Every system (including human) arises, exists and disappears. The entire course of the life of the system can be divided into six stages: rise, growth, fracture, blooming (aka inertial), convolution and memorial.
1) Let us imagine some human system, a structure that is in a stable state balanced with the external world (this is the Memorial Phase). Lets make a reservation right away in fact, any human structure, be it a people, and even more so a company, the external environment gives too few chances to live to equilibrium. Let us assume, however, that adversity has not yet touched this part of society. In this system, people live (for example, in some hidden corners in the mountains, on the islands) according to custom, according to the covenant of the fathers, according to the order established by someone once and for all. They do not claim anything beyond what their familiar environment gives them.
2) The family, as usual, is not without its black sheep there is always a certain number of passionate individuals who cannot or do not want to be like everyone else. The main mass does not perceive them otherwise as eccentrics, renegades or, worse, degenerates; and crushes them in all possible ways both moral and physical. Due to this, deviations from «normal» behavior, from the generally recognized standard, usually exist at the level of barely noticeable deviations fluctuations. But as soon as the original community is weakened natural disasters are to blame, the economic crisis, or the invasion of aliens «renegades», passionaries get a chance: they first form small companies, communities, which are later joined by fragments of obsolete systems. This is the beginning of the Rise Phase. First of all, in the embryo of a new structure, a clear self-consciousness arises that we are We, they are not at all those who are near and around. Those are strangers, enemies! A spontaneous, unconscious unity arises the psychology of the pack: «one for all, and all for one.» The ideological dominant has not yet been worked out. The vigorous activity of passionaries causes the growth of a new system. This structure is active, it seeks to annex new territories, markets, areas of activity. The stereotype of behavior of the old system «be like everyone else, do as usual» is replaced by the imperative of Duty:
«You must be just like that for the sake of the Common Cause, for the sake of our Community.» The general passionarity of the members of the system is growing. From quiet townsfolk, adapted to the old conditions, they turn into seekers of improvement, first without risk, and then at the risk of their lives. This marks the transition to the Growth Phase (according to Gumilev «Akmatic).»
3) This is the phase of prophets, fanatics of the new cause, revolutionaries. This is the phase when «Striving for the ideal of success and victory» becomes the imperative of behavior. «The greatest rise in passionarity the akmatic phase of ethnogenesis causes peoples desire not to create integrity, but, on the contrary, «to be themselves» not to obey general regulations, to reckon only with their own nature. In general, this is a very «boorish» stage. The right of force reigns here, whoever has time he ate it, the end justifies the means, the competitive struggle for leadership is the most ruthless. During this period, the system spends a lot of energy both on external expansion and on internal civil strife.